I used to be more forward about current events in these rambles. I used to pay more attention to them, as well.

But at the peak of that optimistic and yet enraged young man in midst of feeling his oats, life changed. Drastically. Certainly for the best, but not without tremendous difficulties. But it might just be that all the worthwhile things in life require effort. Patience, and the like.

Folks of faith would likely chalk much of my early adult life to tests from gods, but I feel more certain that I have been brought here by means and ripples of my own decisions. A perspective due to my being a junkie for free will and those sorts of ideas. Master of my own destiny, and the like. Claimer of the glories and bearer of the burdens of the many deeds and missteps I’ve made. And the many more of both that I am likely to wade and wander through still.

This could all be echoing of my insatiable and unrequited ego, but to quote an essential icon of the hot guy 30s mentality- ‘if there is anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.’

Anyway.

Do you feel it? I do.

A paradigm shift is upon us. Or upon your humble narrator, at least. Though the whats and hows and whos of all of it are still uncertain, if there are any ideas where things might end up getting got to being with. But I have learned enough lessons about rigid plans for future ideas. A lack of adaptability is a key to self-made destruction. Too much pre-planning will eventually lead to disaster. Inability to get beyond a preconceived notion once the possibility of such notions falls into the what-if realm of the past will likely lead to little more than despair. A dance I’ve shuffled my way through at least a few times in this meager existence I call home. But, as my own slightly sarcastic self-made line goes, if you’re never prepared, you’re always ready.

But I’ve been feeding myself on healthy and unhealthy doses alike, of emotion and symbolism of varying degrees. Some that are existing in actuality. Some that are total fantasy. And plenty more that are the sort of stuff that so elegantly resides between the two. Seemingly, always bouncing around and between these truths and falsehoods, leading me to believe that time is a life of its own, and very much a living thing, or at least something akin to the organic.

Funny though, one of the symbols recently fed back into the system argues with the very point I have just set out before your eyes. A book. One of the best written and one of my favorites. Within the pages of this fiction, the idea is argued that the past, present and future are not moving. That they are fixed and always exist simultaneously and eternally. It is only our perception that moves through it, believing that we might be able to shape any of it one way or another. That what was and will be, has always been and always will be.

The last time I read the book, which was also the first time, the memory crawls forth of laying out in the front lawn of the home in which I was raised, some decade and a half ago. I was young, in all that beautiful idiocy. It was spring. And I was in love. Or at least, so I believed.

I finished it again, last night, the book, a second time. Alone, on a night shift at work, waiting around for the bells of chaos to strike. I was less young, though still plenty. It was the end of autumn. And the very ideas of love baffle me in a way the certainty (failed certainty) of yesteryear might not be able to comprehend.

Perhaps that is what it is like to be unstuck in time, though. Only I can’t seem to be able to say I know much of anything about the future bits. I’ll keep my predictions to myself, and just see how it all ends up going, wondering whether there was ever any sort of control, or if that is just the sweetest of illusions I seem to be able to regularly incite.

 I was wondering, last night, about the dynamic between disappointment and expectation. And how one does not seem to be able to exist without the other. Or at least the former not being able to happen without the influence of the latter. I suppose expectations can be met. In fact, I know they can. But I for one have never had an absolute accuracy between them. And I believe that I never fully will. Nor do I think I would want to. Where would the fun be, without any surprises?

But without expectation, I suppose disappointment never even gets the chance to put its shoes on. But without expectation, how could there be any sort of excitement for that which has yet to arrive?

I think of beauty. In the broad sense and in the more finite. In its vibrancy at times, and the faded flicker being all that is conjurable, at others. There is something to say about faded beauty. All whispers and echoes and such. Something so vivid and violent in its persistence, reduced down to a hum, not dull, but far from commanding. The weight of the lightest final breaths of an idea. Of an emotion. Of expectation.

I am not stupid, perhaps tragically. The stupid do so often seem happy, even if superficially. Because the superficial is more than enough for them, and might be that I occasionally hold envy regarding folks who exist in such simplicities. But I do not reside there. Nor do I believe I ever will. Too aware and too able to perceive to ever be truly stupid.

I am, however, most certainly, a fool. But that is a choice, not a pre-existing condition. And a choice I have made, and will continue to make regularly, it seems. And being a fool, I so often tie myself to ideas of hope, even when perhaps knowing better. And I wrap all this into the idea of the moral high ground I attempt to occupy. That there is a benevolence in being a fool, and nothing but tragedy in being a cynic, no matter how accurate. A hill I’d imagine I’ll die upon, no matter what pragmatism attempts to sway my mind away from that inspiring foolishness.

I was fearing, for a while, that all my gusto had gone out of these rambles, and so many other things. That the fire once burning has since turned to dampened embers, producing near nothing in terms of heat and light. That the pointlessness of my attempts at expression should only serve to feed back a cease and desist order into the system. Attempts at preservation by my reducing all action and activity towards these higher inexplicables all together.

But I know this to be false. Sparks can still happen, and do. Even if they never end up being anything more than that. Because I already know that one worthwhile spark of something divine, to put it reductively, is more than enough to live a long while off of. The spark must be honest and potent, if only miniscule and brief. But if she is genuine, a lot of life and art and all those sorts of big human ideas can be continually conjured for a stretch of time that makes the inciting moment pale in comparison as far as the minutes, hours, day, years and so on that used towards the pondering and palpation of it.

I was flicking through old images on the old pocket computer earlier. Initially to prove a point about the absurd (but stunning) attire I used to regularly garb myself in. Blazers and vests and ties and such. One of which is the image shared with this evenings thoughts. In some ways, I cannot believe that I am the person in the picture. In other ways, I know to my deepest core that it is just as much I as the I that writes all this nonsense now. I have both aged by all the years that have passed, and somehow, haven’t aged at all. The faces and postures are still there. And the spirit, though adapted, is still in the same vein of essence now, as it was then.

A fool then, and a fool now. Choosing to be so, because it is the only way I ever wish to be. No matter how accurate my paranoias and cynicisms might end up being, I will still fight and argue and claw against them. For I know the reward for being the right kind of fool, even if only for a moment, is worth more than a million lifetimes of being correctly aligned with the more malignant thoughts and feelings.

     And if you would like to hear and see and know more about this fool and his journeys, continue to tune in. Or just give me a ring, if within such personal circles of mine you might reside.

Even when it pains and costs me, I will choose to hope and wish for a better tomorrow than today. Even when the today was wonderful and idyllic and grand. But especially, and most importantly, when the today has failed or been damned or is just plain dull. As a matter of my mental conditions, I truly believe that things can always get better, no matter how hopeless and desperate they seem. Might just be a managing of expectations. Or it might just be that the gusto needs to be turned back up, perhaps to truly absurd and insane levels. Or at least enough to drive the fight a day further. Or a year. Or just one moment further. To some simple wonder, that only the truest of fools can appreciate. Or to those even grander and expansive wonders. The very kind that fools are born to be getting after, doomed or otherwise.

But, I guess we’ll see how we all feel about this in another week. But as much as I’ve changed over these years, in so many ways I haven’t changed at all. And I firmly believe that to be a choice. One I choose every day, and have no intention, no matter how difficult things might get, on giving up on. Not while there is breath in my lungs, and beat in my heart, and song in my soul.